Re: overstock.com adds GoodRelations in RDFa to 900,000 item pages

Thanks Martin,

That is an excellent explanation.

> The GoodRelations proprietary axioms are at
http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/wiki/GoodRelationsOptionalAxiomsAndLinks

I went to the site, and there is no indication on limits of rights usage -
so in what sense are the axioms proprietary?

Michael


On Wed, Oct 6, 2010 at 10:49 AM, Martin Hepp <
martin.hepp@ebusiness-unibw.org> wrote:

> Hi Michael,
>
>
>  Michael,
>>
>> I had a look at some of the examples. Noteworthy is the apparent lack of
>> any product ontology.  Martin's example example is for a camera with
>> housing. An obvious way to model this is as a bundle with two things: one of
>> type Video Camera and one off type UnderWaterHousing.  There is nothing of
>> this sort. Rather, this and perhaps all 900,000 items are of type: Product.
>>  In other words, there is no semantics at all for the products, no types, no
>> features, no constraints, nothing.
>>
>> Have I missed something?
>>
> Yes, two things:
>
> 1. It is a dangerous misconception to expect the original data publisher to
> do all the data cleansing and linking. Providers of dataspaces or
> complementing data services can add the missing pieces or cleanse the raw
> data from the LOD space.
>
> 2. Part of the product semantics can be originally exposed in textual
> properties and tokenized or extracted by someone else.
>
> Take this data:
>
> foo:myproduct a gr:ProductOrServiceSomeInstancesPlaceholder ;
>        rdfs:label "Digital Camera"@en .
>
> This is not perfect, but it's already much more accessible to SPARQL
> queries, and the armada of NLP techniques can be used to add the triple
>
>        foo:myproduct a ceo:DigitalCamera .
>
> in some other RDF graph anywhere on the Web.
>
>
>
>
>> If this is true, the question is why.  Possibilities include:
>>        • Expedience:  It is conceptually trivial to convert the catalog to
>> RDFa this way.
>>
> It is too expensive to expect data owners to lift their existing data to
> academic expectations. You must empower them to preserve as much data
> semantics and data structure as they can provide ad hoc. Lifting and
> augmenting the data can be added later.
>
> If you expect all shops in the world to classify their products according
> to Cyc or eClassOWL, they will not be able to publish any data.
>
>         • First things first: it was just a first step, more semantics is
>> on the way...
>>
> In the long run, there will be an incentive to add more semantics to
> articulate your value proposion more clearly.
>
>         • Lack of perceived value: Does it cost too much for what value
>> there may be?
>>
> See above - this way, publishing the data can be done easily. Adding Cyc or
> eClassOWL classification will cost a lot but not bring new business for the
> moment.
>
>
>  I wonder what the value is for this first step.
>>
> Improved rendering in Yahoo plus visibility in many of the evolving
> eCommerce applications based on GoodRTelations.
>
>
>  I wonder whether there are plans for adding semantics to the products
>> themselves.
>>
>>  I don't know, but as said, it need not to be the retailers that add the
> product master data.
>
> Much more realistic is a scenarios in which
> 1. shops will typically just expose *offer* data and
> 2. manufacturers or data intermediaries will provide fine-grained product
> *feature* data.
>
> Overstock uses a minimal subset of GoodRelations, sufficient for SEO, which
> will become more powerful when linked to other data.
>
> In an ideal world, they would also immediately provide gr:hasMakeAndModel
> links to the URI of the respective camera model data
> (gr:ProductOrServiceModel) and/or narrow down the semantics of the product
> placeholder node from gr:ProductOrServicesSomeInstancesPlaceholder to the
> intersection of e.g.
>
>  gr:ProductOrServicesSomeInstancesPlaceholder
>
> and
>
>
> http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/ontologies/consumerelectronics/v1#DigitalCamera
>
>
> Example:
>
> PREFIX o :  <
> http://www.overstock.com/Electronics/Bell-and-Howell-DV550UW-12MP-Digital-Video-Camera-with-Underwater-Housing/4450313/product.html#
> >
>
> o:product  a gr:ProductOrServicesSomeInstancesPlaceholder,
> ceo:DigitalCamera ;
>                gr:hasMakeAndModel foo:DV550UW12MP.
>
> foo:DV550UW12MP would be the make and model master data, defined somewhere
> else, e.g. on the manufacturer's page:
>
> foo:DV550UW12MP a gr:ProductOrServiceModel, ceo:DigitalCamera ;
>        ceo:weight ..... .
>
>
> But even shallow structured offer data can be very useful, as long as there
> are strong identifiers attached. If overstock.com used UPC / EAN codes
> (gr:hasEAN_UCC-13) or manufacturer's part numbers (gr:hasMPN), which they
> unfortunately don't, it would be very easy to link the products to matching
> datasheets:
>
> # Add gr:hasMakeOrModel links between models and products on the basis of
> identical EAN_UCC codes
> CONSTRUCT {?product gr:hasMakeAndModel ?model}
> WHERE
> {
>  ?model a gr:ProductOrServiceModel.
>  {
>    {?product a gr:ProductOrServicesSomeInstancesPlaceholder.}
>    UNION
>    {?product a gr:ActualProductOrServiceInstance.}
>  }
>  ?model gr:hasEAN_UCC-13 ?ean.
>  ?product gr:hasEAN_UCC-13 ?ean.
>  OPTIONAL {?product gr:hasMakeAndModel ?model2}
>  FILTER (?ean!="" && ?model != ?model2)
> }
>
> Then, you can trigger the default GoodRelations axioms for adding model
> feature to products:
>
> # Products inherit all product features from their product models unless
> they are defined for the products individually
>
> CONSTRUCT {?product ?property ?valueModel.}
> WHERE
> {
>  {
>   {?product a gr:ActualProductOrServiceInstance.}
>   UNION
>   {?product a gr:ProductOrServicesSomeInstancesPlaceholder.}
>  }
>   ?model a gr:ProductOrServiceModel.
>   ?product gr:hasMakeAndModel ?model.
>   ?model ?property ?valueModel.
>  {
>   {?property rdfs:subPropertyOf gr:qualitativeProductOrServiceProperty.}
>   UNION
>   {?property rdfs:subPropertyOf gr:quantitativeProductOrServiceProperty.}
>   UNION
>   {?property rdfs:subPropertyOf gr:datatypeProductOrServiceProperty.}
>  }
>  OPTIONAL {?product ?property ?valueProduct.}
>  FILTER (!bound(?valueProduct))
> }
>
>
> And SCHWUPP! ;-) you have very rich information about every single product
> from initially shallow shop data.
>
> Martin
>
> PS: The GoodRelations proprietary axioms are at
>
> http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/wiki/GoodRelationsOptionalAxiomsAndLinks
>
>
>
> On 06.10.2010, at 19:15, Michael F Uschold wrote:
>
>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Oct 6, 2010 at 5:39 AM, Martin Hepp <
>> martin.hepp@ebusiness-unibw.org> wrote:
>> Dear all:
>>
>> I am happy to announce that overstock.com, one of the major US online
>> retailers, has just added GoodRelations rich meta-data in RDFa to ALL ca.
>> 900,000 item pages.
>>
>> Example:
>>
>> http://www.overstock.com/Electronics/Bell-and-Howell-DV550UW-12MP-Digital-Video-Camera-with-Underwater-Housing/4450313/product.html
>>
>> Sitemap:
>>  http://www.overstock.com/googlemap.xml
>>
>> There is still a minor bug in the markup (regarding the position of the
>> rdf:type gr:UnitPriceSpecification statement), but I will notify them
>> immediately; the bug will also not break typical GoodRelations queries.
>>
>> Best wishes
>> Martin
>>
>> --------------------------------------------------------
>> martin hepp
>> e-business & web science research group
>> universitaet der bundeswehr muenchen
>>
>> e-mail:  hepp@ebusiness-unibw.org
>> phone:   +49-(0)89-6004-4217
>> fax:     +49-(0)89-6004-4620
>> www:     http://www.unibw.de/ebusiness/ (group)
>>        http://www.heppnetz.de/ (personal)
>> skype:   mfhepp
>> twitter: mfhepp
>>
>> Check out GoodRelations for E-Commerce on the Web of Linked Data!
>> =================================================================
>> * Project Main Page: http://purl.org/goodrelations/
>> * Quickstart Guide for Developers: http://bit.ly/quickstart4gr
>> * Vocabulary Reference: http://purl.org/goodrelations/v1
>> * Developer's Wiki: http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/wiki/GoodRelations
>> * Examples: http://bit.ly/cookbook4gr
>> * Presentations: http://bit.ly/grtalks
>> * Videos: http://bit.ly/grvideos
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Michael Uschold, PhD
>>   LinkedIn: http://tr.im/limfu
>>   Skype: UscholdM
>>
>
>


-- 
Michael Uschold, PhD
   LinkedIn: http://tr.im/limfu
   Skype: UscholdM